North Africa and bail-out dominate Europe

By PRSD, on Friday, March 25, 2011

Graham Wastons South West MEP, was among the many who were approached for the cash for questions sting by the Sunday Times, but like plenty more, declined their advances

This week I enjoyed the comfort of not having to travel anywhere beyond Brussels; which I appreciated, since it has been a busy week for the EU (reflected in the length of this week‘s letter).

The troubles in North Africa dominated the early part of the week, with the 27 member states’ foreign ministers meeting to review the situations in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and in particular Libya. Germany is unhappy with the attacks on Libyan targets but has not prevented the UK, France, Italy and others going ahead.

It is tempting to believe that the interests of oil companies BP, Total, and ENI have something to do with this, but I believe that a genuine concern to prevent a bloodbath in Benghazi was uppermost in policymakers’ minds, together with the determination to send a signal to other authoritarian leaders that ruthless suppression of protests will not be tolerated.

NATO is taking over responsibility for the mission. When Baroness Ashton came to the EP’s foreign affairs committee on Tuesday I quizzed her about the ultimate goal of the action and the division of responsibilities between NATO and the EU. (The committee’s hearing was web streamed and can be viewed online.).

The latter half of the week was dominated by the European Council (‘summit’) meeting at which the governments agreed, as expected, to create a European Stability Mechanism (’bailout fund’, to which Germany will contribute nearly 30% of the total) to underpin the euro; and other measures to tackle the sovereign debt/bank capitalisation crisis.

Tensions between the Anglo-Saxon and Continental approaches are running high. But even a passionate advocate of the latter like me can hardly deny the problems highlighted in George Soros’ article in Tuesday’s Financial Times: and if the Continental approach is to carry the day a much larger stability mechanism may yet be needed, as the European Central Bank has warned.

The decision by Portugal’s main centre-right opposition party to bring down the country’s centre-left government by voting against inevitable austerity measures has thrown the problem once more into sharp relief. In my view their action was downright disloyal both to their country and to their partners in the euro-zone. But their leader and probable future prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho used the meeting of the European People’s Party just before the European Council to crow of his success. Europe’s Socialists are now so weak they did not even hold a meeting of their prime ministers; we Liberals, while few, nonetheless had our three there, together with other leading Liberals.

In a plenary session in Brussels this week Parliament voted inter alia to approve the Treaty change necessary for the European Stability Mechanism. In committee we added the right to contact friends and relatives and the right to medical care to a new charter guaranteeing rights to suspects in criminal proceedings anywhere in the EU.

MEPs also welcomed a proposal from the Commission to extend freedom of information legislation to all EU executive agencies and an announcement from environment commissioner Janez Potocnik (Slovenia, LD) that he is considering a total EU ban on plastic bags.

An emergency session of energy ministers on Monday failed to reach agreement on the details of testing of the EU’s nuclear power plants. It looks as if Germany may start a gradual phase-out of nuclear power, while France will not. Meanwhile China appears to be considering abandoning uranium-fuelled nuclear power plants in favour of the much less dangerous thorium-fuelled plants.

EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom (Sweden, LD) has been in Egypt and will now go to Tunisia to seek help in dealing with the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean; the Italians say that 15,000 have reached the island of Lampedusa so far this year.

Two MEPs resigned and a third was expelled from his political group after being caught in a cash-for-questions sting by the Sunday Times. I regret that they do not publish the names of the many more MEPs (including the author of this column) who were approached and declined.

I will address students at Exeter University this evening and travel to Cornwall tomorrow (Saturday, March 26) to be briefed the County’s Deputy Chief Fire Officer.